"My boy, you must get up this minute; I've sent for the doctor, and your father wants you and Maggie to come to him."
"Is he worse, mother?"
"He's been very ill all night with his head, but he doesn't say it's worse; he only said suddenly, 'Bessy, fetch the boy and girl. Tell 'em to make haste.'"
Maggie and Tom threw on their clothes hastily in the chill gray light, and reached their father's room almost at the same moment. He was watching for them with an expression of pain on his brow, but with sharpened, anxious consciousness in his eyes. Mrs. Tulliver stood at the foot of the bed, frightened and trembling, looking worn and aged from disturbed rest. Maggie was at the bedside first, but her father's glance was toward Tom, who came and stood next to her.
"Tom, my lad, it's come upon me as I sha'n't get up again. This world's been too many for me, my lad, but you've done what you could to make things a bit even. Shake hands wi' me again, my lad, before I go away from you."
The father and son clasped hands and looked at each other an instant. Then Tom said, trying to speak firmly,–
"Have you any wish, father — that I can fulfil, when—"
"Ay, my lad — you'll try and get the old mill back."
"Yes, father."
"And there's your mother — you'll try and make her amends, all you can, for my bad luck — and there's the little wench—"
The father turned his eyes on Maggie with a still more eager look, while she, with a bursting heart, sank on her knees, to be closer to the dear, time-worn face which had been present with her through long years, as the sign of her deepest love and hardest trial.
"You must take care of her, Tom — don't you fret, my wench — there'll come somebody as'll love you and take your part — and you must be good to her, my lad. I was good to my sister. Kiss me, Maggie. — Come, Bessy. — You'll manage to pay for a brick grave, Tom, so as your mother and me can lie together."
He looked away from them all when he had said this, and lay silent for some minutes, while they stood watching him, not daring to move. The morning light was growing clearer for them, and they could see the heaviness gathering in his face, and the dulness in his eyes. But at last he looked toward Tom and said,–
"I had my turn — I beat him. That was nothing but fair. I never wanted anything but what was fair."
"But, father, dear father," said Maggie, an unspeakable anxiety predominating over her grief, "you forgive him — you forgive every one now?"
He did not move his eyes to look at her, but he said,–
"No, my wench. I don't forgive him. What's forgiving to do? I can't love a raskill—"
His voice had become thicker; but he wanted to say more, and moved his lips again and again, struggling in vain to speak. At length the words forced their way.
"Does God forgive raskills? — but if He does, He won't be hard wi' me."
His hands moved uneasily, as if he wanted them to remove some obstruction that weighed upon him. Two or three times there fell from him some broken words,–
"This world's — too many — honest man — puzzling—"
Soon they merged into mere mutterings; the eyes had ceased to discern; and then came the final silence.
But not of death. For an hour or more the chest heaved, the loud, hard breathing continued, getting gradually slower, as the cold dews gathered on the brow.
At last there was total stillness, and poor Tulliver's dimly lighted soul had forever ceased to be vexed with the painful riddle of this world.
Help was come now; Luke and his wife were there, and Mr. Turnbull had arrived, too late for everything but to say, "This is death."
Tom and Maggie went downstairs together into the room where their father's place was empty. Their eyes turned to the same spot, and Maggie spoke,–
"Tom, forgive me — let us always love each other"; and they clung and wept together.
Book VI. The Great Temptation
Chapter I. A Duet in Paradise
The well-furnished drawing-room, with the open grand piano, and the pleasant outlook down a sloping garden to a boat-house by the side of the Floss, is Mr. Deane's. The neat little lady in mourning, whose light-brown ringlets are falling over the colored embroidery with which her fingers are busy, is of course Lucy Deane; and the fine young man who is leaning down from his chair to snap the scissors in the extremely abbreviated face of the "King Charles" lying on the young lady's feet is no other than Mr. Stephen Guest, whose diamond ring, attar of roses, and air of nonchalant leisure, at twelve o'clock in the day, are the graceful and odoriferous result of the largest oil-mill and the most extensive wharf in St. Ogg's. There is an apparent triviality in the action with the scissors, but your discernment perceives at once that there is a design in it which makes it eminently worthy of a large-headed, long-limbed young man; for you see that Lucy wants the scissors, and is compelled, reluctant as she may be, to shake her ringlets back, raise her soft hazel eyes, smile playfully down on the face that is so very nearly on a level with her knee, and holding out her little shell-pink palm, to say,–
"My scissors, please, if you can renounce the great pleasure of persecuting my poor Minny."
The foolish scissors have slipped too far over the knuckles, it seems, and Hercules holds out his entrapped fingers hopelessly.
"Confound the scissors! The oval lies the wrong way. Please draw them off for me."
"Draw them off with your other hand," says Miss Lucy, roguishly.
"Oh, but that's my left hand; I'm not left-handed."
Lucy laughs, and the scissors are drawn off with gentle touches from tiny tips, which naturally dispose Mr. Stephen for a repetition da capo. Accordingly, he watches for the release of the scissors, that he may get them into his possession again.
"No, no," said Lucy, sticking them in her band, "you shall not have my scissors again, — you have strained them already. Now don't set Minny growling again. Sit up and behave properly, and then I will tell you some news."
"What is that?" said Stephen, throwing himself back and hanging his right arm over the corner of his chair. He might have been sitting for his portrait, which would have represented a rather striking young man of five-and-twenty, with a square forehead, short dark-brown hair, standing erect, with a slight wave at the end, like a thick crop of corn, and a half-ardent, half-sarcastic glance from under his well-marked horizontal eyebrows. "Is it very important news?"
"Yes, very. Guess."
"You are going to change Minny's diet, and give him three ratafias soaked in a dessert-spoonful of cream daily?"
"Quite wrong."
"Well, then, Dr. Kenn has been preaching against buckram, and you ladies have all been sending him a roundrobin, saying, 'This is a hard doctrine; who can bear it?'"
"For shame!" said Lucy, adjusting her little mouth gravely. "It is rather dull of you not to guess my news, because it is about something I mentioned to you not very long ago."
"But you have mentioned many things to me not long ago. Does your feminine tyranny require that when you say the thing you mean is one of several things, I should know it immediately by that mark?"
"Yes, I know you think I am silly."
"I think you are perfectly charming."
"And my silliness is part of my charm?"
"I didn't say that."
"But I know you like women to be rather insipid. Philip Wakem betrayed you; he said so one day when you were not here."
"Oh, I know Phil is fierce on that point; he makes it quite a personal matter. I think he must be love-sick for some unknown lady, — some exalted Beatrice whom he met abroad."
"By the by," said Lucy, pausing in her work, "it has just occurred to me that I never found out whether my cousin Maggie will object to see Philip, as her brother does. Tom will not enter a room where Philip is, if he knows it; perhaps Maggie may be the same, and then we sha'n't be able to sing our glees, shall we?"